


Achilles Come Down

by tinyfiestyrosiekitten



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Implied Soldier/Reaper, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts, no one dies, this is sad and dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:26:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26882137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyfiestyrosiekitten/pseuds/tinyfiestyrosiekitten
Summary: Achilles, Achilles, Achilles Come Down, Won't you get up off of the roof?Don't you know that we love you?// I don't know what I was feeling when I wrote this, but I felt like I needed to write it. I was encouraged to share it. Please read carefully. It has dark themes with suicidal like behavior, PTSD, Drinking, and Smoking. REcommend to listen to to understand the title Reference and the song I was listening to when I wrote this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5aMav6q-o0&list=RDn5aMav6q-o0&start_radio=1
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Achilles Come Down

A soldier sits on the edge of a roof. 

Red armored Gloved fingers cupping together to protect the lighter in his grip, the flare highlighting the crags of his face in the dark and smoke wafts up after. The ember of the cigarette a dying star in the low light as his heels gently tap against the edge of the wall under the roof edge. His pale eyes cast upwards as he stares at each glittering diamond. 

The world revolves slowly and quietly, uncaring of the man on the roof. 

He inhales and the dying star flares like a shooting star glimmering across the black velvet sky before it dims again. Beautiful in its death. 

It lights pale eyes oddly as the smoke kisses his features as it disappears slowly around him. 

Like Life.

Like Love. 

Like Hope.

It clings to his skin but is not visible not really. His thoughts chasing each other endlessly in Sisyphean circles and what does it even matter?

He hums a few bars, some song from years ago, but it feels like a new lifetime and one that was buried with the man who never used to sit on roofs with cigarettes. His gloves slide over to grip the glass of a dark bottle. Exchanging one vice for the other, a long slow drag that poisons a body that refuses to stop moving, letting it happen and encouraging even. 

He lets the bottle drop to dangle from his fingers as he swallows. 

The stars above still do not care about the man on the roof that contemplates them in the chill of the night air. They do not care about mortal woes, or mortal trials. They do not care about Death and Tragedy. 

They are all made of star stuff. 

He thinks of glittering medals pinned to pressed fronts of uniforms. Thinks of smiles that hid vipers bite and a wolf’s teeth and the way it feels for buckshot to burn into his skin and back. 

Another long swallow before the bottle slithers from his grip as he uncaringly releases it to watch it shatter in glittering shards. Like stars in the velvet dark sky above, just as easily dismissed, and just as uncaring; no one will question their existence either when they wake in the morning to find the blinking pieces of the life of the bottle scattered there.  
A whisper, the ghost of warmth across his cheeks and his ear. He gathers his cigarette again and lets it settle on his lips. Like a lovers kiss, warmer then the bottle had been even if only for a moment. As fleeting as laughter lines on dark skin and the warmth in dark eyes. 

His brow furrows sharply and the world seems dimmer as he curls into himself. Heels scraping that wall. 

He has no excuses for what had become of his life. He had no excuse for what had become of his love and hope. 

What did you say to a man who had everything and foolishly lost it all?

What did you say to yourself that had not already been said?

That ghost seems to settle into his back and kiss his shoulder like cigarette smoke and starlight’s glittering sweetness. Tucks into his side and presses words he can’t hear anymore to his skin. 

He stands up slowly. Boots scraping the edge, swaying slowly in the lightest breeze as he flickers his gaze between the stars above and the stars below. Embers dripping from his lips like hellfire whispers. The ghost rises along with him. 

Hands that embrace his chest with a false warmth and weight. 

He closes his eyes, turning on his heel. He knows the edge by heart, by memory. Treading it slowly and without fear as the ghost walks beside him. One in the air, the other on the roof and they are both whispering together to him. 

Which one to listen to he wonders? 

What did one say to a man who knew death and the hurt it could garner? 

When he deserved every ferocious whisper that came from behind its gritted teeth and aching lungs. 

He tips his head back, tucking his gloved hands into the pockets of his jacket. Letting some of the embers sting his skin before the embers are burning his lips like a lover’s devouring need. 

Head dropping forwards, chin hitting his chest. The butt of the cigarette dropping from his mouth to the ground so far away now. Swaying on the edge of the corner where the roof corners to nothing, to the cliff below, to the sea that sways quietly like a mother whispering lullabies. 

Like soldiers in bunks too narrow for big bodies and the sickly warmth of illness and science made madness. The soft breeze is the cradle of knuckles on his cheek and a palm on his back. 

The ghosts are silent for but a moment. 

The stars stare down, down with glittering bright eyes. Uncaring but curious. 

Jack twists on his heel and slowly turns down onto the roof as the ghost by his side coaxes him down. 

Hunching his shoulders as he stalks away from that whispering phantom in the dark to the false dark of the doorway leading to the stairs back into the base. 

\--

Ana opens her one good eye and slides out of the shadow of the building buttress as she slowly lowers her rifle and unseats the dart within. 

She follows after Jack into the dark stairwell.

She wishes she could silence his ghosts. All she can do is watch. One glittering eye in the dark. 

-

Red eyes slowly close, ghosting away from the building before him. Death does not walk here this night. Would not walk here ever, if he could only carry his voice every night to the soldier who stood on the roof under a wounded gaze of red fire and starlight.


End file.
